She would have had a love for her people, the Israelites. She saw their suffering under the harsh Egyptian taskmasters. Her voice would have mingled with the cry that rose up to God, as we read later, “the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them” (Exodus 3:9).
Did she even harbour a hope that Moses would grow up to become the one who would intercede on behalf of the Israelites.
Was she like Mordecai, who saw his cousin Esther placed in a position of power and privilege, and could say to her, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).
Did Jochebed’s mind swirl with plans and ideas of how God might use her son in accomplishing his plan of deliverance? Is that what the New Testament commentary on her husband and her means when it says, “they saw he was a beautiful and divinely favoured child” (Hebrews 11:23 AMP)?
If so, at first it seemed things were going to plan.
“Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens” (Exodus 2:11).
He wanted to help them. He hadn’t been hardened by his years growing up within a culture that was so against God’s people.
Is this what Jochebed had hoped for all along? Moses taking an interest in their plight, standing up to the Egyptians and trying to protect his own people.
But things go horribly wrong. A murder. An accusation. And Moses flees for his life, knowing that Pharaoh has discovered that he has killed an Egyptian.
Moses is now far away from the people of God. Gone away in disgrace. Any thought of him accomplishing a great work for God seems to have gone up in smoke.
Are Jochebed’s hopes dashed? Her plan, which she had nurtured in her heart, appears to have fallen to pieces.
Yet, although Jochebed’s plan might fail, God’s plan will stand firm.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways”, says the Lord (Isaiah 55:8).
God was going to do a work in Moses while he was away from Egypt. He would take him from the palaces of Egypt out to a wilderness to look after sheep. It was here that Moses would encounter God in a way that he hadn’t encountered him while in Egypt.
After forty years in the wilderness, God appears to Moses in a burning bush.
Moses must come face to face with God.
He hears the voice from the burning bush declaring, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” He hears God declaring, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God (Exodus 3:5-6).
Moses is confronted with the holiness of God and must acknowledge his own sin.
The forty years in the wilderness have brought Moses to a point where he readily acknowledges his unfitness for the task God calls him to do. No longer is he the proud, strong Egyptian prince standing over another Egyptian and striking him down. We now hear Moses saying, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11 NIV).
Moses has learned humility and his own unworthiness. It is from this posture of humility that God will use Moses mightily to show His own great power over Pharaoh and all of Egypt.
We scan across the years and see God bringing Moses from the wilderness back to Egypt to be the leader of His people. To speak for God, to show God’s mighty works, to bring those who were bound in slavery out to freedom. To lead God’s people all the way through the wilderness. To be the one who received God’s law, the one to whom God showed His glory.
We don’t know how long Jochebed lived, and how much of Moses’ life she got to see. Did she live through those forty long years? Years of waiting and wondering. Hope flickering dimly.
Perhaps your own children are far away from where you would like them to be? Perhaps they have turned away from the faith. Perhaps your heart is heavy with despair and the situation seems hopeless.
Let us hold on to hope and continue to pray in faith.
“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him” (Psalm 42:5).
We have an advantage over Jochebed, as we know the great man of God Moses became.
What joy would have filled her soul if she could have seen into the future and watched her son (the one she had entrusted to God so many years before) as he stands before the people of Israel. They are filled with fear as God comes down to speak to them. Smoke billows up from the mountain as the Lord descends on it in fire, with thundering and lightning. The people are so afraid that they refuse to come near to hear God’s message to them. But Moses steps forward. Confident. Unafraid. He will go near to God.
Later Moses would say, “I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up the mountain” (Deuteronomy 5:5).
How was Moses able to confidently stand before God unafraid?
From that first day standing at the burning bush, when he hid his face from God, something had changed in Moses.
Moses had come to know God for himself.
God had said to him, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight’ (Exodus 33:12).
Though he knew he was a sinner, yet Moses trusted in the grace that God extended to him.
Moses became one of the greatest men of God. His deepest desire was to know God personally. He would say to God, “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight” (Exodus 33:13). The close relationship Moses had with the Lord is recorded for us, as we read, “So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (v.11).
The faith of Jochebed played a huge part in Moses’ life but, ultimately, Moses belonged to God. And it was God who stepped into his life in a mighty way. When we, as mothers, fear for our children and the path they are on, let us remember the God who intervened in Moses’ life. We can trust in the goodness of this same God to speak into our own children’s lives.
Let us, like Jochebed, be women whose faith is firmly anchored in God, remembering that “with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37).
